The present invention relates to a connection control module of a switching node in a telecommunications network, wherein the connection control module is adapted to communicate to a service control module of the switching node.
A connection control module is already known in the art, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,623,488 entitled CALL SET-UP SERVER. Therein, a call set-up server is described, adapted to control call handling and connection handling. This call set-up server especially includes a connection handling module, indicated by 320 of FIGS. 3, 7, and 10 of this prior art document. This connection handling module has a service interface, indicated with 315 to a call handling module 310 shown in the same prior art figures. Since a call handling module can be considered as a service control module, the prior art connection handling module including a call handling interface to a call handling module can thus be considered as corresponding to a connection control module as described in the preamble of the first claim of this document.
A drawback of this approach is the lack of flexibility, mainly because of the full-connection approach in the presence of a half call control. This will be illustrated by means of the following example of a call forwarding service from a second to a third party. In the prior art case, two individual connections first need to be set up, a first one between a first and a second party; and a second one between this second and a third party. For the call-forwarding service from the first directly to the third party, a new connection between this first and third party is to be set up in the prior art system. This is quite difficult since a completely new connection handling module between the first and the third party is to be set up, based on information residing in the different central parts related to the first, second and third party. For other three-party supplementary services, the appropriate connection handling module is to be constructed each time, based on information to be gathered from a higher level, e.g., the central part. This is difficult and complex.